Filed under: News, Google, Browsers
Google Apps to stop supporting old browsers
It appears an email is being sent out to the administrators of Google Apps accounts informing them that support for legacy browsers is going to be discontinued. Specifically, IE6 is being called out, but Google specifies that only Internet Explorer 7.0, Firefox 3.0, Google Chrome 4.0, Safari 3.0 -- and all newer versions of these browsers -- will continue to be supported.
This is great news, as it will lead to more rapid deployment of updates and features to the Google Apps, and will hopefully also lead to speedier performance from them.
Though we haven't yet received this email we expect to see it any day. An old DLS blogger (Adam!) gave us the tip.
Read on to see the full content of Google's browser support email.
Dear Google Apps admin,
In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.
We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.
Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.
Starting next week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser. We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.
In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience. We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.
Thank you for your continued support!
Sincerely,
The Google Apps team

Chromatic is one of the best time-wasters I've recently come across. It's all about the gameplay -- no Flash graphics here. You play a "circle" (it doesn't really have a name in the game). You move around with the arrow keys, and you change colors with Z, X, and C.
You can either be red, blue, or yellow, and you can switch at any time during the game. Each color has different capabilities -- yellow can double-jump, while red has a longer dash (which is like a forward sprint, activated by double-pressing DOWN).
Each ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
2late2die said 10:33PM on 1-29-2010
So Google's cleaning up Microsoft's mess, eh? Well, if anyone can do it, that'd be them. :)
I think the proverbial straw finally broke the collective back - everybody seems to be realizing that IE6 is a piece of shit that should've been wiped off the face of the earth years ago. Well, better late than never.
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Delyn said 3:47AM on 1-30-2010
This is official, but unofficial almost 80 procent of website doesn't support IE6 and maybe 40-50 procent doesn't suppoer FF2.
The element from the pages are many times sort with errors.
But unfortunately I know a lot of friends and co-worker that still uses IE6. :(
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zsyco said 6:04AM on 1-30-2010
Micorosft has telling people to not be dumb and upgrade for a long time, this isn't an MS mess. You'll notice that it says: "older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers". If MS went out and disabled all IE6 installations, they'd get nailed with all kinds of lawsuits so all they can do is not suport it and hope that those people who still have it will wake up. Unless they're using it to hack, there's no good reason to stick with it. Any apps that require it should have been updated years ago.
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octoberasian said 12:58PM on 1-30-2010
The issue with IE6 was because it introduced non-compliant, proprietary HTML standards from Microsoft. And, there are still many companies using Windows 2000 and IE6 because their intranet (not INTERNET) internal company websites are still using those HTML standards from Microsoft that only works on IE6.
The problem then stems from the fact that many employees (and employers) who still use Win2000 and IE6 are too illiterate on technology and how unsafe and how incompatible IE6 is, and use IE6 to browse websites outside the company's intranet. To have a company upgrade from Win2000 to something else and IE6 to IE8 is just more costs to them. And, in this economy state, I don't know if those companies are willing to spend the extra time and money to do just that.
The day we can rid of IE6 and any remnants of proprietary Microsoft HTML and Javascript coding on the website will be a very good day on the Internet. Until that happens, and until people are more educated with what's good and bad on the Internet, we will have to deal with Microsoft's problematic IE6 and their shoddy "standards."
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stm said 7:04PM on 1-30-2010
"Google specifies that only Internet Explorer 7.0, Firefox 3.0, Google Chrome 4.0, Safari 3.0 -- and all newer versions of these browsers -- will continue to be supported." And what about Opera? I never understood why everyone always dismiss Opera users?
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